


When the Rain Ends

by tenzo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-24
Updated: 2011-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 17:44:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenzo/pseuds/tenzo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1969, two people are looking for things that are bigger on the inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Rain Ends

Martha took the hand of DI Billy Shipton. It was a strong hand, but clammy and trembling, and she got the impression that this level of confusion was not something the man experienced very often. "Come on, DI Shipton. The kettle's already on and we've got a cozy little room waiting for you."

The flat was very small, especially for the Doctor, who constantly seemed to be pressing against its boundaries. He could nearly touch both walls of the living room at once just by stretching his arms out, and he bumped his head on the door frames at least twice a day. He paced and fidgeted, breaking dishes at an alarming rate. This little council flat was simply too small to contain a Time Lord.

A former medical student and a former detective inspector, however, were another thing. It was funny thing, how her life had expanded so greatly and then contracted just as quickly. The little corner shop she worked in was small, her pay packet was small, their black and white television was extremely small, and the only thing around that was bigger on the inside was Martha Jones. She could tell, as soon as they walked in the door together, that she and Billy Shipton would both fit. For a time.

They gave Billy Shipton the front bedroom, with its saggy single bed and drafty window. Martha had filled a hot water bottle and placed it underneath the sheets even before leaving to find the man misplaced in time. It had been a rainy spring, with a chill that crept right into her bones and which no amount of woolly cardigans mitigated. Their new arrival would need time to get used to a life that ran just that much colder than the dry, warm houses of the 21st century.

He'd dutifully sipped at his tea and even nibbled a little of a biscuit as Martha tried to run interference between him and the Doctor's need to deluge the poor man with information that he could barely comprehend. The contents of Sally Sparrow's folder were strewn across the kitchen table and the Doctor kept jabbing his finger down onto this or that scrap by way of explanation. He expected their new arrival to accept all of this just based off of some scribbled post-it notes and pages that had been folded and unfolded so many times that they had holes at the conjunctions of the creases.

Martha didn't have much to add, but little by little began to collect the papers back into their original folder, collating and placing the paper-clipped bundles back in the correct order. The Doctor reached out to locate the list of DVDs, to wave around as the key to the whole plan, only to find that it, and everything else, had been neatly re-filed. He went silent, glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

"I think it's time for the humans to get some sleep," Martha said.

Billy Shipton put his tea cup down with a clatter and began to stand before the Doctor had even processed that this meeting was adjourned.

"Right," the Doctor said finally. "Right, right you are, Martha. My apologies. We can talk some more in the morning."

Billy shot a despairing glance to Martha.

"Or maybe the day after, Doctor," she said, earning a barely concealed sigh of relief from Billy. "Come on, I'll show you your room."

She hadn't really planned on visiting him that first night. She sat on her own lumpy bed in the the dark back bedroom, contemplated taking a bath in another vain attempt to get warm, and listened to the Doctor's usual nighttime routine of pacing around the flat. In order to visit Billy--just to see how he was getting on, of course--she'd have to walk through the living room, and past the Doctor. She surprised herself with how little she cared about his opinion in this matter.

She found Billy sitting on his tiny little bed, staring out at the rain.

"You're awake," Martha said, stating the obvious.

"That man--that Doctor--told me how and when I will die, down to the _minute_. I don't think sleep is something I'll be doing for a little while."

Martha sat on the edge of the bed, which groaned and shifted on its little casters. "I really wish he hadn't told you that. Not yet, at least."

"When the rain ends," he said, still looking balefully out the window. "How can I enjoy a sunny day ever again?"

"I'm sorry."

Billy shifted away from the window, the springs squeaking. "You both keep saying that. Are you?"

"Of course." Martha was taken aback. There seemed to be a lot of apologising in this life with the Doctor, but she always meant it. She was even beginning to think that the Doctor might sometimes mean it as well.

"But after all this is over, and I do what I'm supposed to, you get to go home, yeah? But me... She was about to go on a date with me, you know. Sally Sparrow, she gave me her number and I was about to call her and have a normal pint at a normal pub and then a drunken snog in a normal doorway. Sounds like a pretty good night, doesn't it?"

This was information most definitely _not_ in Sally Sparrow's meticulously detailed folder.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you and her were..."

"Ah, but we weren't." Billy's eyes flashed in the dim room and Martha ached for him and all that he'd lost. "We weren't and now we never will. My future is in her little folder, like she's some kind of god, you know? Where I will live and who I will love and when I will die... like I have no choice."

Tthe truth was that Sally's notes were going to happen-- _had_ to happen. But neither Sally Sparrow nor the Doctor knew everything. No one can tell all ends. "There is one thing that isn't in Sally Sparrow's notes."

And then she kissed him. Just like that, a proper kiss. Damn subjective time and linear progressions and damn sodding 1969 and all. The Doctor, still rattling about the flat and probably blowing up the cooker from the sound of it--screw him, too. She kissed Billy Shipton, and he kissed her back and there was no one around to scribble little notes about it.

When she pulled back again, the bed springs squeaking loudly, Billy Shipton was smiling. It was a great, bright smile and the first she'd seen from the man since he'd arrived. "Now _that_ was a 21st century snog, gorgeous girl."

"I'm sorry, what did you call me?"

"Gorgeous--"

"I heard you the first time, actually," Martha said sternly, but she couldn't really remain angry at the ridiculous epithet. "I think you'll fit in to 1969 just fine."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He clearly knew exactly what it was supposed to mean.

She composed herself and shifted closer, wincing at the obscene noises this blasted bed made if you so much as looked at it wrong. "Just shut up and kiss me again."

 

***

Never in his life had he thought he'd find himself spending so much time on an allotment. Or any time, really. That was for pensioners and ladies of a certain age with a passion for their prize cabbages. But here he was: Billy Shipton, grower of the biggest, butteriest, finest potatoes. Potatoes so fluffy and gorgeous, you could eat them just boiled with a little salt and it was divine. As someone who already knew when and how he would die, he could go out and eat all the chips he wanted, but he preferred his boiled potatoes.

The Prescott Channel off over the hill was stinking to high heaven, and it would be a few decades before environmental regulations did anything about that. According to Sally Sparrow and her little folder, he'd have moved to Shepherds Bush by the time anyone began to care about sewage contamination or chemical dumping.

He scraped away a bit more soil from the base of one of his potato plants, like an archaeologist. If he was honest, this was probably his favourite past-time any more, digging for potatoes. It was like finding buried treasure, and was as much of an endorphin rush as he was likely to get. Every now and then, when no one else was around, he'd pull a potato out of the ground and tell it, "You're nicked, son," before putting it in his bucket.

But not this time, because he wasn't alone.

"You've come to say good-bye," he said, eyes still searching the soil.

"I'm sorry," Martha Jones said. She said that a lot, and her Doctor as well. It wasn't that he didn't believe they were sorry, it was more that he didn't believe they'd remember how sorry they were. Well, he couldn't blame them. "You did it though."

"I'll take your word for it."

"I've come to say thank you," she said, and he felt a hand on his shoulder.

When he stood, she was already so close, dressed like a 21st century girl. He'd never seen her like that, in jeans and a leather jacket. She looked confident. She looked happy, despite her apologies.

"I can see you again, though," he said, brushing his hands off on his trousers. "You've got your time machine, you can turn up any time you'd like."

"I can't."

He knew she'd say that, but that didn't make the sting any less. "Is that you talking, or the Doctor? Or Sally Sparrow?"

"I just can't, Billy. You have your whole life to live, and you'll meet your wife and have your children. I'd just muck it up."

God damn that sensible, level-headed Martha Jones. He didn't want to be sensible. The Doctor seemed to be the gooseberry here, why couldn't they exchange places? Let that madman dig potatoes in the Docklands while he and Martha travelled through time. All that he thought, but what he said was: "You've made up your mind."

"I'm sorry," she replied, again. "But I don't want to leave with you cross. I've cocked this up, haven't I?"

"One last kiss, gorgeous girl, and I'll forgive you."

"I think that can be arranged, DI Shipton." She laughed and her smile seemed to be an entirely different creature from all the smiles she smiled in their little flat. It was electric, brilliant, and he would never see it again. It would be that smile he'd see as he took the steps in the future to lead Martha to this moment in the past. He knew he would do anything for that smile.

If a boat had come down the canal, it would have seen a man and a woman embracing, stealing a moment in a place where they might have a modicum of privacy in this great, heaving city. It would have seen the woman draw away again, smoothing down her daring clothing, her smile strangely full of both hope and regret. She be seen to walk away and not look back.

The man, alone on the allotment again, threw his potatoes into the canal one at a time, until the sun was low in the sky and the midges began to bite.


End file.
